CoCo3.org -- The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 308, April 8, 2023

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 308, April 8, 2023
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Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
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1) Bob over at his Youtube channel La Coco Strangiato posted a video
about using a SCART to HDMI converter, both for composite and RGB making
his own cables. Spoiler - his sub title (referring to RGB) is "How NOT to
make a cable"):
  https://youtu.be/57eSKE4yzmY

2) John Mark Mobley of Glenside posted a new page that he put up on the
Glenside website - CocoFest! Questions and Answers, which is meant for
people that are new to CocoFests and are wondering about what to bring,
general questions about the show, etc:
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-questions-and-answers/

3) John Zizolfo has posted an updated text screen (and 64x32 SET/RESET
graphics) worksheets in Excel form to the Coco group on Facebook. This
covers Coco 1/2 and 3 text screen resolutions:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160575010707641/

4) Robson Franca did an interesting video showing an oscilloscope rendering
all 4 voices in one of the Coco versions of the William Tell Overture. I am
not sure why, but it appears to be playing a bit muddier and lower pitch
than any of the versions that I have (and some individual voice pitches
are definitely off). Does anybody else agree?
  https://youtu.be/rseJvVRYmKc
His other video that he played through XRoar seems much closer:
  https://youtu.be/1EGhKH6hIGg
(I should mention that both of these are based on the 16K version of <5
minutes. There is 32K version that includes more of the song and clocks
in around 9 minutes)


MC-10
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1) Robert Sieg posted another test map to see what his 192 tiles look like
and connect together for his game project "Pandemic". He also uploaded
a ZIP containing the picture, since Facebook drops the picture quality,
if you want to get the highest resolution:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5961527247307381/

2) David Mitchell posted a video showing a GFX demo type in that he ported
to the MC-10 from the Dragon (called Whirpool):
  https://youtu.be/-b_5XZqXFFk

3) Dillon Teagan posted an MC-10 port of the Columbia Shuttle BASIC program
(that uses DRAW statements) that uses MCX BASIC, and even supports PMODE 4
if your MC-10 has been modified to have 8K RAM accessible by the VDG. In
the comments he shows a picture of it in PMODE 2, which is the highest
resolution that an MC-10 can get without hardware modifications (128x192x2):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/5961150607345045/


Dragon 32/64
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1) Pierre Dandumont on YouTube posted a video called "Data Record: Talk
to Me (flexidisc)/Mainframe (Dragon 32). It looks to be a kaleidoscope
type program with audio coming from tape, I think?
  https://youtu.be/UlKwhbKFkxo


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
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1) Our very own Ken @ Canadian Retro Things put up a video playing the
current Game on Challenge, Arex by Adventure International, but he goes
in depth comparing the Coco 1/2 version and the Atari 400/800 version:
  https://youtu.be/Kwv9-efG8_w

2) By fluke while going through *all* of 5&1/4" disks over the past 2
months to find programs missing on the archive (and on my site if they
are games), I chanced upon some of the disks that Harvey Brofman (author
of Dunkey Munkey and Starfire) had sent me some years ago. I had grabbed
stuff of his off of them already (including the Dunkey Munkey source code,
but since I had properly cleaned by real floppy drive this time around,
I managed to recover some other things too (including source code for
Starfire, now on my site and the archive) and their Screen-64 utility
(and source; I have to make a quick notes file on how to use it since I
don't have the manual). But like many of us, he had some disks with some
early (1983 or earlier) 3rd party games as well, and to my surprise, this
included 3 games from 1981 that I never though would be found, including 2
of very few (<10) machine language games for cassette that would run in a
4K Coco. This includes Space Intruders by Charles Forsythe from Adventure
International, and Gauntlet by Britt Monk (later sold by Avalon Hill):
  http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/coco_game_list.html

3) Chronologically Gaming is approaching the end of 1981, just about
finished the "T" games that had no firm release date. His show yesterday
include Trek Adventure for the Coco (53:21 into Twitch version):
  https://youtu.be/olmokc78Vv0?t=2870

4) "The only way is OLED display" channel on YouTube has put up some more
Dragon gameplay videos, and I think this is the first time that they have
done long play videos... unfortunately, like the last few, they seem to
have a TV nearby turned up far higher than the game, so you may want to
mute it. Longplay videos this week include Rommel-3D, Boris the Bold,
Time Bandit and Screaming Abdabs:
  https://www.youtube.com/@MaryWinstead32/videos

5) Longplay Kingdom on YouTube put up a gameplay video of Bricks on
the MC-10:
  https://youtu.be/rZu-5GjxpmQ

6) I thought Jim Gerrie wouldn't have anything new to talk about this
week... and then he cranked out 4 videos this morning of stuff he ported
to the MC-10.
Caves1 originally by Dave Kaufman in 1973. It is said that "Hunt the Wumpus"
may have influencded this game, where you try to escape a tree shaped maze
vs. trying to kill something:
  https://youtu.be/99QHjAnPzzU
"Les Cavernes" was originally by Chalres Feydy in 1982, is a port from
the TRS-80 Pocket Computer to the MC-10. Jim mentions that is a hard
adventure game:
  https://youtu.be/kSwOhbteQtg
"Dungeons and Dragons" was originally by Peter Trefonas in 1980 and is a
mix of text adventure and RPG:
  https://youtu.be/AEJRYUuieqM
And lastly is "Dragon Dungeon" originally by Peter Goode in 1984, which
is a simple text based RPG:
  https://youtu.be/eEi0CW28kz0

7) David Mitchell also posted on his "Davy's Retro Corner" YouTube page a
quick game play video showing Breakthru, and Brickout type in game ported
from the Dragon to the MC-10 (Dragon User magazine March 1984 by Garry
Saunders originally):
  https://youtu.be/t0S6_UoQeuo